GNSS storm nowcasting demonstrator for Bulgaria

GNSS is an established atmospheric monitoring technique delivering water vapour data in near-real time with latency 90 minutes for operational Numerical Weather Prediction in Europe within the EGVAP service. However, nowadays with advancement of GNSS processing the quality of real-time GNSS tropospheric products is well comparable to near-real time solution and in addition they can be provided in a temporal resolution of 5 minutes and low latency, suitable for severe weather nowcasting. The aim of the project is to exploit the added value of GNSS tropospheric product for nowcasting of convective storm by building demonstrators in support of public weather and hail suppression services in Bulgaria. In Bulgaria  thunderstorms and hail events are  occur between May and September with a peak in July. The convective Storm Demonstrator (Storm Demo) is based on GNSS tropospheric products and Instability Indices to derive site specific threshold values integrated and updated in real-time on a publicly accessible geoportal. The demonstrator targets development of service centered at GNSS products for two regions with hail suppression operations namely Northwestern and Central Bulgaria.  As a part of the Storm Demo real-time PPP processing will be conducted with G-Nut software for the first time in Southeast Europe for the hail suppression season May-September 2021. Evaluation of the real-time products will be performed using reprocessed GNSS tropospheric products.  The added value of the high temporal resolution of the GNSS tropospheric products will be investigated for selected storm cases.  This service will be unique in Europe and will serve as a prototype for real-time provision of GNSS products for storm nowcasting.